please forget me (you were right, dear)
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: If sadness were a person, Remus rather thinks that she would treat him as a lover. For Sirius, it is regret. /Remus, Sirius, and the people who always find them when they are alone. For Izzie.


**A/N:** This is a bit weird. But I think I like it.

For Izzie, because she introduced me to the beauty that is Keaton Henson's music, because she is perfect, and because I am a crappy beta. (I'll send your Maurader fic back soon, I promise; I'm not as good as you are at filling those stubborn gaps.)

Thank you to the fabulous Samuela for betaing! What a lovely wifey.

* * *

_Miss you terribly already,__  
__Miss the space between your eyelids,__  
__where I'd stare through awkward sentences__  
__and avoid through awkward silence._

* * *

He downs the last of the firewhiskey bottle by his bedside, stands on shaking legs, and walks into the sitting room. It is cold and bare, only cheap and crumbling furniture. There is not a picture in sight; the wall still shows where Remus tore them down with his bare fingers. His fingernails have left their mark.

The curtains to the only window are half-pulled. The light outside is fragile, the sky a deep pink, and Remus has no idea if it is dusk or dawn.

He finds he doesn't much care.

If sadness were a person, Remus rather thinks that she would treat him as a lover.

He puts the kettle on, if only so the whistling will fill the silence. "Why are you here?" he asks, again and again and again.

"Because nothing seems to go right for you, Remus," she whispers, lips close to his pulse, fingers firm around his wrist. "Sometimes I think you need me..."

"I don't," Remus growls, and pulls his hand from her grasp. "No one does."

She chuckles, dark and teasing, and sighs. "Oh, Remus, how naive you can be." She stalks closer to him, hips swinging, shoulders back, confidence pouring from her every move.

"Without me," she says, "there is no happiness. No joy..."

"Without you, there is nothing _but_ happiness and joy..." His voice is a scratch, lost to the night, or the morning, or Merlin knows, but she doesn't seem care that he has spoken.

"Without me," she murmurs to his throat, hand cupping his cheek tenderly, eyelashes tickling his jaw, "there is no _love..._ Can you imagine that, Remus? No..._love_?"

"No," he chokes, and Sadness wraps him in her arms, tight as anything.

He feels his knees buckle, his shoulders slump, and he falls to the ground like a child, crying and crying and just giving in – he knows it is far too late. He has lost everything now.

"Shhh, Remus," she whispers, but he can hear the delight in her voice. "I'm here."

The kettle screeches, steam billowing from its spout.

Sometimes, she is all he has left.

* * *

Sirius sits up a little straighter every day at 6am because he knows that this is when Remus first stirs.

The walls are cracked as Sirius' dry, Sahara lips and the wind as fierce as the ache in chest – he had not known what it was to really _feel_ until it was all he had left.

If regret were a person, Sirius rather thinks he would treat him as a lover.

"Fool," he says, tracing the outline of Sirius' ribs against his weak, paper thin skin. "Think of everything you could've done to change it, to save them. Think of James... If he could see you now, eh, _Padfoot_?"

"Shut up," Sirius says, but he cannot muster the conviction to mean it; anything is better than the silence here.

Regret walks, broad shouldered and wide, strong fingers closing tight around Sirius' throat, breath hot and _wrong_on his cheek, he says, "Never. _Never never never._ Without me, you'll go mad."

"I _am_ mad," Sirius growls. "I am mad and you are not real and _Remus believes, he has to._"

"You never told him," Regret says, his voice low and steady. "You should've told him... You should've _trusted _him."

Sirius swallows thickly, throat dry and sore. "I know."

"Tell me your biggest regret," he hears, feeling those strong fingers cross his collarbones, his shoulders. "Is it switching? Is it not fighting hard enough? Is it trusting Peter? Is it...love?"

"Him," Sirius croaks. "I should've left him. He could've been happy. He could've – "

And then he can no longer continue, eyes burning with tears, chest heaving.

"Shhh, now," Regret says. "Remus would be better off forgetting, wouldn't he?"

"Yes," Sirius mouths into the darkness. "_Yes_."

And Regret pulls him close, kisses his neck softly.

"He will, Sirius. He will. One day..."

And until that day, Sirius will let Regret hold him as he sleeps.

* * *

So Remus carries on – barely.

Sadness never leaves, and whenever he asks Happiness to visit, she's always busy meeting someone else. So he takes Loneliness as his mistress; she kisses him too softly. He makes Grief his everlasting wife; her hands are too small to hold the hurt he needs her to.

And Regret... Regret pays him a visit, wears Sirius' face, says, "_You can never forget me,"_ and leaves emptiness in his place.

* * *

Sirius survives, though he sometimes wishes he didn't.

Regret comes and goes, and Sirius knows he will never truly leave. With those amber eyes, that pink-scarred skin, that cackling laugh that bounces around his ribcage.

The years pass, and Madness comes to stay. She is wild, and bends impossibly, curling herself around Sirius' limbs and whispering things about revenge. She sometimes beings her sisters, Anger and Betrayal, but they never stay long.

Regret always comes back, wearing Remus' face, and says, "_You are mine, and only mine. You have to be; you've ruined me."_

And Sirius has never felt so alone.

* * *

_And I,_  
_I hope for your life,_  
_You can forget about mine,_  
_Just forget about mine._


End file.
